Hard work a tradition in WV basketball

The tastefully hip may blanch at the ensemble, but at West Valley High School it’s considered fashionable to pair the orange and black with a blue collar. In fact, it’s mandatory.

“That’s the tradition here,” senior guard Brady Bagby said. “If you’re going to play basketball at West Valley, you’re going to work hard every day and you’re going to play hard on defense. You know that when you first come in.”

The Eagles, who carried a 19-3 record into Friday night’s loser-out Class 2A playoff game with East Valley-Yakima in Ellensburg, revel in their blue-collar basketball roots.

Second-year coach Jay Humphrey rankles at the thought of having to play a loser-out game after emerging from the Great Northern League tournament with the No. 1 seed (“One loss and, boom, it’s baseball season,” he said). But the other side of that coin, he points out, is that West Valley’s tradition serves it in good stead in situations like this.

“It served us well last year and we found a way to make it all the way to state,” Humphrey said. “It’s what helps this team find a way to win close games all yearlong. This group, especially our seniors, is motivated to get back to state.”

Wednesday the Eagles went through an atypical workout, given that typical basketball teams already have turned in their uniforms and are preparing for the first day of spring turnouts.

It’s a businesslike setting in the West Valley gym. There is no yelling, no screaming and no messing around. Outside of the sound of a bouncing basketball, the loudest sound in the gym is the squeak of more than a dozen pairs of basketball shoes.

Humphrey’s whistle hangs from the lanyard around his neck and stays there; there’s no reason for him to raise his voice and he does not. Everyone uses their indoor voice unless they’re calling out defenses during a scrimmage.

While the volume stays low, the work-level remains high. Weak passes are pounced on mercilessly. Rebounds are an open invitation for battle and loose balls invariably result in bodies sliding on the varnished floor.

All the while the team focuses on fundamental basketball. The flashy stuff, the fancy dribbling and the trash talk, is nowhere to be seen. An alley-oop dunk by Bagby, a sparkling play, gets two whoops from his teammates. Just two. A backdoor dunk a few minutes later goes whoop-less.

A shooting drill that divides the varsity into two teams brings out the squad’s competitive fire, and it’s apparent that this group enjoys its time together.

“These guys are just like a bunch of brothers – they really are,” the coach insists. “They tease one another mercilessly, constantly. But I think if anyone else ever did it, they’d all go after whoever it was that did it.”

“We all love each other, it’s that simple,” senior guard Kyle Wagner admits. “We love each other. There’s no other way to put it. We’ve been this way since we were all playing summer basketball.”

“And none of us want to be the one to let our teammates down,” senior post Jeno Martin adds. “It’s the last thing any of us wants to do.”

That, too, the seniors insist, is part of the West Valley tradition.

“Pretty much all of these kids grew up watching West Valley boys basketball,” Humphrey said. “They saw what it means to be an Eagle, and they come into the program ready to do what it takes.

“That tradition is pretty important around here. I think we all want to maintain that tradition of excellence.”

The Eagles finished the regular season tied for first place with Clarkston. An out-right league title was lost when Pullman traveled to West Valley and pulled off a 56-44 upset.

“I think that was the moment we realized that we needed to pick up our game and take it to the next level,” Bagby said. “That was supposed to be Senior Night, and to have that game go the way it did ruined it.”

Humphrey said he had not heard his players talk about that loss that way, but it pleases him.

“I had hoped they would take that loss that way,” he said. “We’d worked too hard to lose a game like that – we’d won too many close games to let that one get away from us. I’m glad to hear him talk about it like that.”

Bagby has been the team’s leading scorer in 20 of 22 games this season, averaging 20.5 points per game. The 6-foot-3 guard scored a season-high 41 points in the team’s second game of the season and scored 20 or more points a dozen times.

Freshman Jake Love has been a regular offensive contributor, scoring in double figures 10 times.

“This group has done a great job of accepting their roles this season,” Humphrey said. “They may not always like what that role is, but they accept it and they work hard to play that role.”

That’s the tradition.

“I think we all realize what it means to wear this uniform,” senior post Rakeem Shields said. “I think about that every time I put the uniform on, especially since you never know when you’re putting it on for the last time.”